Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. The ilimbalakata is the cinsengwe ca mubwalwa, the cinsengwe used at hunting rituals with beer and at old beer parties. It is sometimes called Kawaya. It has many musango and only one drum pattern which is the same as that for Kaluwe (hunting possession) songs and dancing except for the master drum pattern. Ilimbalakata is the performance of hunting cinsengwe by a non-possessed accompanied by drumming.
The term Ilimbalakata can also be used to refer to the occasion at which this type of song is performed.
Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. 

The ilimbalakata solo dance

During an old beer party, people can be singing songs without dancing or they are ‘just dancing’, that is: no special attention is given to it because ‘you can not do that kind of dancing better than somebody else’.

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. Then suddenly, a man stands up and takes a big piece of cloth from a woman. While he ties this around his waist, he starts a song. Someone takes over his solo line and the others take the chorus line. After the drums have started, he starts to dance the ilimbalakata. It is the dancing out of his personal experience while hunting one of the bigger animals. How he spots an animal, asks his companions to be quiet, how he stoops to get closer to it, aims and decides to get a little closer, aims again, shoots the animal, performs the actions needed until the animal is dead and takes care of its spirit by, for instance, closing the nostrils with medicine.
During the dance, one or more women may dance a short dance of praise around him. The showing how to hunt in hunting dances is instructive but may also serve the purpose of convincing the public that the success was not acquired by malicious means. When this hunter’s dance is danced to it, the text of the ilimbalakata is always about hunting.

Song 68

An ilimbalakata if sung by a non-possessed hunter and a Kaluwe song if sung by a Kaluwe medium, as sung by Mika Mwape Chungwa, 1986.

Text of Song 68 ∵ Not so Maunga

Bambi nimfuti shakutwako sasa
Tamubwene ba Maunga abalala mwipengele

Some only use their guns as pestles to pound cassava leaves
Not so Maunga, the one who lies in hiding near the animals’ tracks

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. The text refers to the famous hunter Maunga (‘mister Mpanga’) from Mukopa who died in 1984. In 1986, his spirit possessed a woman who could bring this song as a Kaluwe (ritual) song.

Song 69

An ilimbalakata from a story as sung by Sakaliya Mulwaso and his sister, 1981.

Text of Song 69 ∵ Imagining the waist of a woman playing around

Mukacibinda/mukaLukonga wasekaseka
Waceba pa cinanga muselempa wa mwanakashi
Kobone ukwinangila nkoya ne ngombe

The wife of the hunter/Lukonga smiles and smiles again
She imagines the waist of a woman playing around
See how I was sneaking, me, the hunter
I am going with big animals

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. The generally assumed parallel between the behaviour of the wife of the hunter and the course of his hunting trip is expressed in this song in the use of -inang(il)a for her (possible) behaviour and his.

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. Other ilimbalakata texts are about mourning, beer, dancing, social problems, and other subjects that can be brought forward at a beer party.

Song 70

A mourning song for a Cililo performed as an ilimbalakata by Sitifini Nunda and the people from Milombwe, 1981.

Text of Song 70 ∵ Then who is keeping my child

Bama balifwa
Mbacindo cindelele mwana

My mother is dead
Then who is keeping my child

Song 71

An ilimbalakata for an old beer party, as sung by Andson Chilimba accompanied on one drum, 1981.

Text of Song 71 ∵ I brew in abundance

Cikumba buce
Nebo ndikumbile ku manga

The one who brews little [They won’t say about me: that is “the one who brews little”]
I have brewed in abundance

Ilimbalakata in other areas

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. The ilimbalakata is mentioned for the Sanga, Mbwela, Kaonde and Lamba regions, as the name of the dance danced at the ritual, also called Ilimbalakata, that was held after an elephant kill.¹Anley (1926: 83), Doke (1931: 328, 360), Roland (1934: np); see also Melland (1923: 287). Both Doke for the Lamba region and Roland for the Sanga region say that the dance originated from the Mbwela and Kaonde regions.²Doke (1927: 524), Roland (1934: np) for the Sanga region: “The Mbwela dance the Dimbalakata [ilimbalakata] for hunting, the same as the Lamba and the Kaonde. The Kaonde also know the Kikanda because the Kaonde and the Sanga understand each other well! The Lamba also know the Kikanda but not the real Lamba, they don’t know it”. (Original in French, translation by Jan IJzermans).
In Chibale neither an origin from outside nor a special connection with the elephant hunt is remembered for the ilimbalakata.

[As to Doke (1931: 360) about the Lamba region in the first quarter of the previous century:
“The ilimbalakata was introduced long ago from the Kaonde and Mbwela people, but is now regarded as a Lamba dance. Two imikunto and one large drum are used. One man dances at a time. He may be an umupalu (hunter) or a man without a profession. The dancer wears two incema (serval) skins, one in front and one behind, hanging from a waist-band. Two other skins, of galago, wild-cat, or genet, are worn at the sides. In his hand he carries a dancing axe (icibanga), and when dancing keeps far from the drums. He imitates the elephant in its gait, the way it looks round, its anger, etc. The people standing round sing. An umupalu dancing this does so in honour of Mwishang’ombe (the guardian of the herds) [Kaluwe]; when an ordinary man dances it he does so in honour of the hunter.”]

I disagree with this for Chibale except that hunting was imitated in the dancing and that the last two lines also are correct.
Mika Mwape Chungwa ∵ personal communication, 1986.

Forms of dancing to ilimbalakata songs

Songs and dances in Zambia: ilimbalakata. Various forms of dancing can be used for the ilimbalakata.
a. no dancing
b. ‘just dancing’ by a group of people (of either sex), see Film 15
c. solo dancing by a man, see Film 16, in honour of the hunter(s) in imitation (cilaila) of the hunter’s or the Kaluwe medium’s dancing³There may be some suspicion regarding the dancer’s pretensions as to his ranking as a hunter.
d. solo dancing by a hunter dancing out his personal hunting experience in honour of Kaluwe, the hunting spirit. In the 1980s, solo dancing to ilimbalakata was sporadic and became more rare afterwards
e. women can praise-dance around the solo dancer of c. and d., see Film 16 above.

Similar solo dancing, called Kaluwe dancing (with a difference in the master drum pattern), is done by a Kaluwe medium.